The Pawnbroker Read Online Free PDF Page B

Babel-like conversation in car motors and boat whistles from the river, in distant shouts, in laughter, in the frayed yet gaudy music from some jukebox. Finally he touched the bridge of his glasses in a habit of adjustment and began walking toward the river, to his car, and ultimately to his cool, immaculate bed.

TWO
    But there were obstacles between him and his bed.
    He parked the dusty Plymouth in the driveway and walked past the stone barbecue, across the flagstone patio with its expensive, yellow-painted garden furniture and the round table with the flowery umbrella in the middle. And suddenly, as he approached the back door of the house, he was burdened with his weight. For a moment he worried about the state of his health, tinkered carefully, but with eyes averted, with that inner mechanism which maintained his equilibrium. Until he opened the screened door and smiled wryly at the creak of it. Maybe it is my menopause, he thought, my change of life come early.
    His sister rushed at him as he entered the kitchen.
    "Ah, look at him, all worn out. Sol,
totinka.
Sit, sit. Bertha will get you a nice cool lemonade;" she said with stagy affection, her gray eyes reckoning slyly as always. "You should conserve, not work so hard, Solly." A heavily built woman in her early fifties, she dressed too youthfully, and her hair was hairdresser-aged, the ends tipped with silver. "Sit. Let Bertha make you comfy with some lemonade." She prodded him toward a kitchen chair with patting motions of her soft hands.
    "I do not want lemonade, Bertha. Stop pushing me to sit! I am dirty—let me wash my hands. Do not concern yourself so much with my comfort all of a sudden," he said. He saw, in his sister's generosity, those sticky fingers that came away with more than they gave. "What do you want?" he asked coldly.
    "Oh, Solly," she scolded. Then she shrugged as though resigned to his lack of understanding. "Well, you know how bad the television has been working. So I figured if you start spending money repairing, it doesn't pay." She looked at him timidly for a moment. "I put down a little deposit on a new R.C.A. But I can get it back. If you object, I can get the deposit back. I just thought that..."
    "All right, all right. Buy it," he said indifferently. "If the others are ready, let us have dinner. Otherwise give me a bite of food now. I'm tired. I would like to go to bed soon."
    "Certainly, I'll call them right away," she said. "Selig is resting. His back is bothering him again. Ah, he's so. delicate, my husband." Bertha spoke with a little smile of pride. "Thank God he has a brain, that he's a schoolteacher. He's so delicate, really," she sighed, pretending wistfulness.
    "He has a good appetite with his delicacy," Sol said with the same unrevealing blandness of tone and expression.
    For a moment Bertha's face revealed her. Her eyes grew hard and her lips drew back slightly; she knew very well the shape and sound of a taunt. But she also knew which side all their bread was buttered on as well as who bought the bread. So, while her dislike of her brother grew a shade bigger, she smiled even more dotingly under her hostile eyes and ventured another intimate touch of his arm.
    "Have I got a delicious piece of brisket for you, Solly; nice black roasted like Momma used to make," she said warmly. "So go, you go wash up and I'll call them all."
    Her smile didn't fade when he left the room; it flicked off electrically. "And tell my big
artist
upstairs that supper is ready," she called after him. She couldn't say what she would have liked to her brother; he had them bound in a chain of money. But her son, Morton, was vulnerable to her irritation. In some ways, her son and her brother were two of a kind, both sullen, unattractive creatures who dampened her "Happy American Family" setting. Oh, she supposed it wasn't Sol's fault that he had gone through what he had. But it
had
been a prison, and the degradation and filth had rubbed off on him. God